Lauren Alaina's 'Wildflower': A track-by-track review

Lauren Alaina's at a time in her life where everything's changing. She would be anyway as a 16-year-old girl, but as an American Idol runner-up just releasing her first album, that whirlwind effect only gets heightened.

Lauren tries to find her footing on Wildflower. She uses some songs to define herself, others to define her dreams for the future and the memories of her past that she wants to carry with her. She sings about mothers and grandmothers and friends and boys. And while Wildflower may not match the great country and pop teen acts with its insights into the teen psyche, Lauren probably will find a lot of young girls who can relate to its songs.

A track-by-track rundown of Wildflower follows.

Georgia Peaches. For longtime country fans, the lead track and second single from this album will probably sound like a run-of-the-mill turbo-country track, with its banjo groove, massive drum sound and guitar-and-fiddle riffs, but it serves two important, practical functions. First, it's what you might call an "identity record," a track that introduces the image the singer wants to convey. (For other examples, look at how Kellie Pickler's Red High Heels and Danny Gokey's My Best Days outlined both their sound and their personae early on.) In this case, Lauren's presenting herself as a flirty yet earthy, churchgoing yet sexy girl -- "Ain't nothin' sweeter than us Georgia peaches." Second, with its "Wo-oh, wo-oh-oh-oh-oh" chorus, it'll be a great live number, as Lauren gets all those girls who similarly see themselves as Georgia peaches (even if they don't hail from that state) to pump their fists in the air and sing along. It's probably also the first song by a major-label country act to name-check Jason Aldean.

Growing Her Wings. Speaking of name-checks, this song about a girl whose father puts her "whole life on lock-down" after he catches her French kissing the neighbor boy references the Dixie Chicks ("Ready to Run in her headphones). The whole track's clearly patterned on that trio's music, from an energetic feel to lyrics that yearn for wide open spaces, and Lauren Alaina sounds like a budding Natalie Maines.

Tupelo. With its "Kisses sweet as the honey," the obvious pop-music antecedent for this dream-date road trip is Van Morrison, but its breezy country pop and summery singalong chorus sounds more like Sheryl Crow.

The Middle. You'd think that this song, in which a girl stumbles across an inspirational message while looking through a stack of old letters might remind her of the grandmother that passed away when she was in fifth grade. Actually, she says it made her think of an old boyfriend. And that's the lesson of this song's appeal: The core message, "The beginning and the end mean so little/What matters most is what's in the middle," applies to almost any situation.

Like My Mother Does. Lauren has talked at length about how important this song is to her, and it's a good old-fashioned American Idol power ballad, the only one of its sort on the album. Think Miley Cyrus' The Climb, but about moms. By the way, this is also the album's one track not produced by Byron Gallimore. Since it was cut before the end of the American Idol season, Tricky Stewart did it.

She's a Wildflower. If you wonder why Lauren named her album Wildflower, listen to the first lines of this song about "the kind of girl that never quite fit in -- holes in her shoes and freckles on her skin." That's how the occasionally tomboyish 16-year-old saw herself as a child. And the line "Pretty soon her luck is going to change, she just doesn't know it yet"? That's who she was this time last year.

I'm Not One of Them. A sassy teen-aged version of Shania Twain's That Don't Impress Me Much.

The Locket. This one sneaks up on you. It's sung from the perspective of a young girl telling the story of her grandparents' romance, but there's a twist at the end that'll break your heart. Don't expect it to ever be a single, but it'll be a lot of people's favorite track on the album (mine included).

Eighteen Inches. Like The Middle, the song Carrie Underwood pitched to Lauren focuses on the essential part of a journey, in this case "the 18 inches from your head to your heart." The story of a couple that gets married too young and then gets pregnant before they can really afford it should remind a lot of people of their own story or those of friends.

One of Those Boys. In I'm Not One of Those, Lauren told us what kind of boys she doesn't like. In this one, she runs down the list of what she is looking for: At 16, that includes someone who knows "my midnight curfew don't mean 12:01." But this isn't some starry-eyed list about her dream boy. Over tracks that wouldn't sound out of place on a Jason Aldean album, she vows to find a "T-shirt, blue-jean-wearin', Mama-lovin', fishin'-pole-carryin', swears-a-John-Deer-revvin'-up-is-music-instead-of-noise" kind of guy.

Funny Thing About Love. All the things I like best about Lauren's singing style -- the break as she flips from her chest to her head voice, the growl in her lower register, the way it sometimes break off into a breathy little gasp at the end of a phrase -- are in full display here. No surprise, then, that it's the one song on the album that she had a hand in writing with Luke Laird and Brett James, neither of whom are strangers to Idol country albums. I've also got a bit of a crush on the lead guitar sound, maybe because something in it reminds of the guitar on Bob Seger's Mainstreet.

Dirt Road Prayer. No disrespect to Lauren, but one of the most exciting things about her album for me is discovering singer-songwriter Nicolle Galyon. Galyon, a Nashville singer-songwriter who originally hails from Kansas, wrote Dirt Road Prayer as well as Growing Her Wings, and she eloquently captures the details of family dynamics in both songs. Here, Lauren worries over a fretful mother, a troubled teen-aged brother, a weary grandparent and the introduction of boy who seems like he could be "the one." It's a lovely finish to an album that tries to capture that adolescent moment when everything changes.

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About Brian Mansfield

Nashville-based Brian Mansfield began writing about music for USA TODAY in 1997 and took over Idol Chatter just before the start of Season 8. He co-authored Make Me a Star: Industry Insiders Reveal How to Make It in Music, and while he has never auditioned for American Idol, he did sing Boot Scootin' Boogie at Disney World's American Idol Experience the day the attraction opened (he lost). More about Brian | E-mail Brian